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The successful delivery of public policy is increasingly dependent upon the effective use and application of new technologies and information systems. However, significant issues are raised when policy conceptualizations travel through the many and often labyrinthine levels of Government Organizations (GOs) in the public administration. These issues turn quickly into insurmountable obstacles that stop any reform process in its tracks, often, with both political and financial repercussions for all involved. For a new, more effective generation of e-Government integration to realize benefits for citizens and businesses, a new mindset called Transformational Government (t-Gov) is considered necessary. Regardless of the technologies selected, effective government-wide guidelines, best practices, principles and policies should be established and adopted from ICT professionals to assess mission-critical government enterprise information resources. Public sector reform using ICT creates unique opportunities, challenges and implications which are imperative to be understood if they are to be successfully managed. This calls for an analytical, interdisciplinary examination from both a theoretical and practical perspective regarding policy execution and materialization towards t-Gov.
This study presents the key findings of an exploratory research project entitled ‘Future Digital Economy’. The research aimed at identifying and further developing the collective knowledge gained from the integration of large-scale e-Government enterprise solutions and proposes an effective way of approaching, analyzing, and defining government-wide architectural practices for achieving a greater level of maturity and predictability when building e-governmental frameworks. A knowledge guide is presented for e-Government integration based on a series of workshops organised in Greece.
The workshops’ participants were experts involved in designing and building national and international, cross-border enterprise frameworks for the public sector (Information Society Technologies, 2003, 2004, 2005; European Commission, 2007; ERMIS Project, 2008). The analysis of the workshops resulted that the vision behind the integration of advanced governmental implementations is extremely ambitious and very attractive to any GO interested in truly improving the effectiveness of its IT enterprise. A set of design, implementation, and government administration principles are clearly specified for achieving common goals and benefits, aiming at the alignment of business expansion and technology domain, improvement of return of investment, organizational agility, procedural effectiveness, and reduction of IT overhead.
The remaining of the paper is structured as follows: First we perform an investigation and evaluates current practices in Nationals and European level; we present different perspectives that influence the implementation of successful e-Government frameworks; best practices’ reforms for efficiently approaching Government-wide integrations are proposed; and lastly, conclusions are drawn.